‘I don’t know. We could’: A MAGA commentator doesn’t rule out taking Greenland by force

Donald Trump wants Greenland, and MAGA’s keen to let him take it by any means necessary.

Since his first term in office, Donald Trump been obsessed with owning Greenland. According to a political ally present at the time, Trump frequently brought up the idea of buying Greenland to his aides and associates. Greenland, in response, said it was “not for sale.” In the lead-up to his second term, the president-elect has renewed his calls to buy the island.

While Trump was announcing his new ambassador to Denmark online, he reaffirmed his intent to buy from the nation’s territory in the same digital breath. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

Some of Trump’s supporters are entirely on board with the President-elect’s bizarre desire to control the world’s largest island. When asked if Trump could take the island “by force” in an interview on CCN, MAGA commenter Scott Jennings said “we could.”

Jennings’ notion of claiming Greenland with violence is a ludicrous one that is unlikely to unfold – it would be an act of international aggression with a key U.S. ally, one that could irrevocably sunder America’s already tenuous relationship with other nations strained by Trump’s increasingly combative foreign policy decisions. It would, in short, be a very, very bad idea.

What does Trump want with Greenland anyway? The island’s remote location in the frigid North Sea gives it strategic value to the United States’ military, allowing America to establish a foothold in the far Northern Hemisphere. Greenland is already home to America’s northernmost military base – The Pituffik Space Base – which provides missile defense support and space surveillance for United States armed forces.

According to Jennings, it’s Greenland’s harsh and remote location that makes it ripe for the taking. In a followup remark, Jennings said that the U.S. could easily claim the island because “there are not many people there.” According to the Denmark government’s official website, Greenland is home to a little over 50,000 people, 88% of whom are Greenlandic Inuit.

The relationship between the United States and Greenland’s native population has been a historically fraught one, with American military operations on the island particularly to blame. When the base was built in 1951, native Greenlanders living at the site were forced to relocate. In 1968, a U.S. aircraft carrying four nuclear bombs crashed nearby, and the subsequent detonation made miles of sea ice completely uninhabitable. In an effort to reestablish goodwill with Greenland’s native community, the base was renamed from Thule Air Base – stemming from a Roman word for the far north – to Pituffik Space Base, which is a traditional Greenlandic name for the settlement that was displaced when the base was first constructed.

If Jennings and other hawkish MAGA supporters have their way, the strained relationship between the United States military and Greenland’s native population will be utterly destroyed. Jennings later elaborated that while the U.S. “could” take Greenland by force, he “[doesn’t] think we should have to,” apparently believing that Greenland already owes itself to U.S. control. The GOP political strategist also suggested earlier in December 2024 that he should be named the Military Governor of Greenland — but like “border czar” and “DOGE” that Trump administration position doesn’t officially exist. Let’s hope it stays that way, for Greenland’s sake.